Carbon 49 USB MIDI Controller Review

A quality keyboard is an important tool for the recording musician--whether you play piano or not. Oh sure, you can try to make do by plinking out melodies on GarageBand’s onscreen keyboard, but you’ll quickly hit a point where you’ll want the hands-on range and expression that only a real keyboard can provide. Samson would be happy to scratch that itch with the Carbon 49...but the product doesn’t seem entirely sure whose itches it wants to scratch.

At first glance, the keyboard seems to be aimed at advanced users. While it packs in the usual Octave buttons (to compensate for losing the extra 39 keys from a full-size 88-key keyboard) and Pitch Bend and Modulation wheels, the Carbon also includes dedicated Transpose buttons, a Data selection knob, and an LED display. Also onboard are half a keyboard’s worth of special functions, accessed via an Edit button, which allow most of the hardware buttons to be remapped to a variety of MIDI functions.

All of this makes the keyboard more powerful than you’d expect from something in this range. But upon closer inspection the hardware seems seriously deficient in the build department. Keys are uneven and feel flimsy, switches and knobs feel like they’re in danger of falling off after a slight knock, and the integrated iPad stand bows alarmingly under the weight of a first-generation iPad.

With the help of a Camera Connection Kit ($29, www.apple.com), the keyboard integrates well with GarageBand and certain other iOS music apps, drawing power solely from the iPad (a feat not all USB-powered MIDI keyboards can accomplish). And to be fair, the product does thoughtfully include two rubber stoppers to keep second- and third-generation iPads snug. But all this doesn’t change the fact that the product simply feels too flimsy to stand up to the kind of frequent use it would see in the studio of an advanced user.

Adding to the confusion is the packed-in software, a five-gig behemoth of dense music apps, software instruments, and samples that are aimed squarely at the power user. The suite, called Komplete Elements, includes Kontakt Player (a scattershot package of software and sampled sounds), Reaktor Player (an incredibly complex method of generating electronic sounds and samples) and--oddly--Guitar Rig Player, a guitar-amp simulator. Each of these apps is extremely powerful and intricate...but each is a light version that requires a purchase to unlock full functionality. And the included instruments and samples are somewhat random, and generally inferior to those already included with GarageBand.

The bottom line. The Carbon seems to want to be in the studios of both power users and newbies, but as a result it’s an ideal choice for neither: it’s too poorly constructed for serious players and too complex for those just starting out.